DOING BUSINESS WITH DRUG ENFORCEMENT ADMINISTRATION

General info: DEA

2401 Jefferson Davis Highway

Alexandria, VA 22301

www.dea.gov

Founded: July 1, 1973

Administrator: Karen Tandy

Employees: 9,629, of which almost 4,700 are special agents

What it does: The Drug Enforcement Administration enforces the laws and
regulations governing the use of illegal drugs and other controlled
substances, and prosecutes those who grow, manufacture or distribute these
substances.

Among its responsibilities, the DEA investigates and prepares prosecution
of violators; works with all levels of government to enforce a drug
intelligence program, as well as on non-enforcement methods, such as crop
eradication and training foreign officials; seizes and forfeits the assets
from illicit drug trafficking.

Under policy guidance from the State Department and U.S. ambassadors, DEA
is responsible for programs of its drug law enforcement counterparts in
foreign countries.

Major subagencies:

None. DEA is part of Justice Department.

Number Crunching

2004 budget: $1.7 billion

2003 budget: $1.9 billion

2002 budget: $1.8 billion

The fiscal 2005 budget request adds $35 million to DEA for an additional
100 special agents, and $14 million for training and infrastructure funding.

THE CIO FILE: WILLIAM SIMPKINS

Full title: Assistant administrator for operational support and chief
information officer

Took the job: January 1999

Hometown: Tewksbury, Mass.

Home now: Crofton, Md.

Family: Wife, who is also a DEA special agent assigned to the Baltimore
District Office. Daughter Meredith, 10; son Brendan, 8. Two older children,
four grandchildren.

Hobbies: Enjoys boating and golf. Has a 21-foot Mako open fisherman and
often goes across the Chesapeake Bay on weekends with the kids and visits
places in Maryland such as Tilghman Island, St. Michaels and Oxford.

Currently reading: "Sick Puppy" by Carl Hiaasen, a friend who also is a
columnist for the Miami Herald.

Alma mater: Bachelor of science in business administration with marketing,
Boston College. Served in Army from 1969 to 1971, then enrolled at
Northeastern University. Received an associate's degree in law enforcement
in 1972.

WT: How has technology changed what your agency does?

Simpkins: Technology has made an enormous impact on what and how DEA
accomplishes its mission. Information systems have made every special
agent, intelligence analyst, diversion investigator and task force officer
more effective. With a global mission and only 4,700 special agents, we
would not be as successful as we are today if all cases had to be made with
the tools I learned as a new agent 30 years ago.

When I came to DEA in 1974, the investigative record process was made up of
index cards in every office. Official case reports were typed by a
secretary on a multicopy form maintained at each office with a
headquarter's copy sent through the mail to the central file room and to
any other field offices that might have an interest in the investigation.

Clearly, from the agent's perspective, there were significant barriers to
relating investigative and case information to other investigations or to
achieving a broader investigative perspective using technology. The
predominant IT tools available at that time were electric typewriters and
index cards.

We at DEA, and in law enforcement in general, have been able to use
technology in many different and important ways to improve our operations.
A fine example of technology that has changed the way we do business is our
case management system.

The new system, with electronic fingerprint and photo tracking, automates
all of the required reporting involved in cases. The information is more
accurate and is disseminated more quickly. Perhaps most important, though,
is that agents spend less time making paper and more time making cases.

In just the last few years, DEA has made huge advances in modernizing our
legacy systems. The current program, called Concorde, will combine the data
from 90 or so stovepipe systems and, with the use of data warehousing and
Web technologies, will be available to all of our investigators and
analysts worldwide.

We are not just updating technology here; we are looking at our business,
our processes and making the most out of the data and information we have.
DEA is in a unique position with our primary focus on drug law enforcement.

WT: What are your biggest tech issues at the moment? Wireless? Patch
Management? Security?

Simpkins: Information security is of major importance. It is an issue we
take very seriously, and like many other IT-related issues, it is centered
more around policy and process, and -- yes -- funding. Most of our data
isn't classified, but we tend to treat it as more sensitive than even the
way commercial banks handle billions of dollars in electronic transactions.

An example of changing a process to improve our IT posture is using a lease
procurement model for our commodity desktop hardware. The funding
requirement is leveled. Another solution we have successfully employed is
to push our telecommunications toward a utility model where the government
buys a managed service, not each piece of hardware. This philosophy has
turned into a Justice Department unified network, one of the department
CIO's crosscutting initiatives. I have been particularly pleased with DEA's
collaborative effort with the department on this effort.

We let the experts manage the technology, and put our government employees
to more effective use. We are putting the government in the driver's seat
by training the staff to be project managers and not commodity techies. In
fact, over the past two years, we have trained and certified 92 government
staff as project managers.

We at DEA want to continue to drive technology into the hands of our
customer work force. Whether that means wireless hand-held devices to
improve agent safety on a surveillance, or improved data mining
capabilities of our valuable information, DEA needs to leverage our
comparatively small work force.

The 9,600 employees of DEA are stretched to cover a worldwide mission in
more than 378 offices. We are pushing technology to make the world smaller,
make each employee more effective, and make it safer for those who work
daily to enforce this nation's drug laws.

DEA's IT customers tend to be computer literate and are very much more
informed consumers. We have put in place a very effective advisory working
group made up of our customers who have an interest in IT and technology
overall.

At DEA, the Field Advisory Council (FAC), composed primarily of assistant
special agents in charge from each of our 21 field divisions, as well as, a
number of headquarter's representatives, help to identify the IT services
needed to support field operations and also our most important
administrative support functions.

They have brought the business requirements and helped establish many of
the priorities that we are pursuing today. We no longer want DEA IT
professionals to independently define what our customers need and when or
how it should be presented.

Through the use of the FAC and other mechanisms, our customers are now far
more involved in identifying IT support requirements and priorities. This
has been one of our most useful tools in avoiding the once-too-common
approach of having the IT professionals building something in a vacuum
"they" believed the field needed.

Through the FAC process, we have also been able to make the
operations-minded portion of our work force recognize the necessity of
their dedicated involvement in the development of any IT project requirements.

The final issue is funding. DEA has focused a great deal of effort on an IT
investment management process. The IT Capital Planning efforts have brought
the headquarters support organizations together to seek consistent and cost
effective solutions. Where in the past there may have been reason to seek
separate solutions, the trend is to look for integrated solutions that
solve many needs.

As the confidence in our ability to deliver these integrated solutions has
grown with our successes our customer's willingness to seek separate
solutions has diminished. An IT Business Council composed of senior
headquarters managers and representatives from the FAC focus on the IT
investments that will best serve DEA. This is where the CIO gets to put the
brakes on those projects that either don't or won't meet the needs of the
customer in a cost effective way.

WT: What do you look for in companies with which you are thinking of doing
business?

Simpkins: We like to see a customer-focus and an excellent track record.
Saying that, we want to make sure you realize that we don't exclude new
companies that haven't had the opportunity to prove themselves yet. This is
the same model we are using to grade our support to our customers. We don't
know if we have strong customer satisfaction if we don't ask the customer,
and we won't ever achieve it if we don't ask them what they want. The same
parallel we look for in companies applies to DEA's internal IT support.

WT: For a company that is new to working with your agency and has something
to offer you, where is a good place to start?

Simpkins: If you are exploring business opportunities with DEA that involve
technology, your best bet is to go straight to the technical staff. The
deputy CIO, Dennis McCrary, has been my right-hand technical touchstone the
entire time I have been the CIO. It has been surprisingly successful having
a non-technical CIO such as me keep the technology implementations on track.

If your technology involves information systems or intelligence
capabilities, the best point of contact is our Chief Technology Officer
Mark Shafernich. He can be reached at Mark.Shafernich@USDOJ.gov. For
business systems, the contact is Helen Pannullo in our IT business unit at
Helen.Pannullo3@USDOJ.gov

WT: A year from now, where do see the agency's technology capabilities?

Simpkins: In addition to continuing to expand our efforts to deliver the
advanced IT capabilities essential to our internal customer's need to
become more and more successful and efficient, we also hope to improve
DEA's information sharing position throughout the government.

DEA has deployed an office automation infrastructure to more than 350
locations worldwide servicing more than 14,000 users, including special
agents, diversion investigators, intelligence analysts, chemists,
laboratory technicians, administrative support staff, authorized
contractors and assigned state and local task force officers. This has been
accomplished with the support of the DoJ, OMB and particularly with the
support received from congressional staffs that actively reviewed DEA
deployment efforts and the establishment of funds for Operations and
Maintenance and Technology Refreshment to maintain the viability of the
system. Today, with a DEA worldwide IT support infrastructure, an
electronic case file, a growing ability to identify individuals and
activities of investigative interest in a more timely manner and the
emerging ability to share information in a secure manner with the law
enforcement community, today's DEA agent operates in a different environment.

Efforts are under way to move away from stovepipe system solutions to new
technologies, such as the Web technologies, data warehouse and
collaboration tools, in our initiative called Concorde.

As a result there will be better access to critical investigative and
administrative information in the future. Currently, the priority is on
improving the ability of the agent to collect, document and develop case
information and share it in a timely manner.

The emphasis is on collecting information once and using it to satisfy many
information requests providing more time for the agent to focus on
conducting investigations. This effort, called Impact, is in the early
stages of deployment. This effort is the first segment in the Concorde program.